Spontae
The law school study workspace
Brief a real case, learn IRAC, and build the habit before orientation. You do the work; Spontæ shows you what to fix. No casebook required to start.
An illustration showing a student's Lucy v. Zehmer note receiving coaching feedback. Spontae shows what is missing and turns the student's attempt into a short practice plan.
A doctrinal semester is thirty hours of reading a week, all of it pointed at one exam worth the whole grade. Nothing in between tells you whether it is working. Every law school anxiety starts in that silence.
The first time anything tests whether you can recall a case, you are doing it in front of eighty classmates. Re-reading the night before builds familiarity, not memory. Cognitive science calls that gap the illusion of competence.
An outline you never applied is notes with better formatting. If the first time you use a rule on new facts is the exam, you learn it does not hold when it is already too late.
With no signal, you study everything and trust nothing. Time is the scarcest thing you have, and you spend it on guesses instead of the weak spots that actually move the grade.
All three are really one problem. You get no feedback until it is too late to use it. Spontæ closes that loop with what cognitive science says works: retrieval practice, spaced repetition, and progressive application.
Lucy v. Zehmer 196 Va. 493 (1954)
Upload, read, brief, pull the rule, outline, drill, apply. Each step feeds the next. Scroll the loop end to end and the readiness score climbs with it, computed from your own work.
Read your first assigned case to start the signal.
Get cold-call ready before class.
Step 01 · Syllabus & Notes
Your syllabus maps the semester; each class's notes then feed every study tool.
Step 02 · Read
Dense and written for judges. You find what actually matters legally.
Lucy offered $50,000 for Zehmer's farm. Zehmer wrote the deal on a restaurant receipt, signed it, then called it a joke.
Step 03 · Brief
You rewrite the opinion in your own words: issue, rule, holding.
Turn each class into exam-ready work.
Step 04 · Rule
Lifted clean of the facts, so it fits any question, not just this one.
Contract formation is judged objectively: what a reasonable person in the offeree's position would believe from outward conduct, not undisclosed intent.
Step 05 · Outline
It lands in your outline by doctrine, not by the order class covered it.
Step 06 · Drill
Flashcards on a spaced schedule, until you don't have to think.
Step 07 · Apply
A hypo you've never seen, written under time. Spontæ critiques what you wrote.
Tom texts: “I'll sell you my car for $4k lol.” She replies “Deal!” and sends a deposit. Tom says he was kidding.
Seven steps later, you know exactly where you stand.
And you never wait fourteen weeks to hear it: every brief, card, and hypo updates a readiness number for each course, computed from your own work, and the workspace names the one thing to do next. Ten tools, one loop; the right one opens at every step.
Free to start · no credit card required
You do the thinking, not us. You write first; the system reads what you produced, names what’s missing, and leaves the revision to you. Nothing here hands you something to submit, because the professor calls on you, not your chatbot. And the exam grades the version of you that shows up.
Read the full integrity policy →UCLA · Psychology BA
SDSU · M.A. Psych. Research
Boston Univ. School of Law · JD cand.
Spontæ is built by Matthew McArthur, a psychology researcher turned law student and a JD candidate at Boston University School of Law. The person building your study tools is briefing the same cases, preparing for the same cold calls, and sitting the same exams you are. A brief library can’t say that.
UCLA Psychology BA · SDSU M.A. Psychological Research · BU Law JD candidate
Read the full story →Retrieval practice
Recalling a rule from memory strengthens it; re-reading only makes it familiar. Every drill in the loop is retrieval, not review.
Spaced repetition
Memory decays on a schedule, so the workspace brings each rule back right before you would forget it, not weeks after.
Progressive application
Knowing a rule and using it on new facts are different skills. The loop ends every week at application, because that is what exams grade.
And the proof you can check yourself: the loop you just scrolled is the product, not a mockup. The same seven steps open on a sample case the moment you sign up.
The four cold-call question types, pressure scripts, policy and fact-change moves, and a five-minute pre-class checklist. One page, printable, free. See what's in it →
You do the work. Spontæ shows you what is working and what to fix next. Free to start, no credit card required.